The only happy people I know are the ones who are working well at something they consider important.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.

The spiritual life is part of the human essence. It is a defining characteristic of human nature, without which human nature is not fully human.

There seems no intrinsic reason why everyone shouldn't be (self-actualising). Apparently every baby has possibilities for self-actualisation, but most get it knocked out of them ...I think of the self-actualising man not as an ordinary man with something added, but rather as the ordinary man with nothing taken away.

Well why not a technology of joy, of happiness?

As one studies these preconditions, one becomes saddened by the ease with which human potentiality can be destroyed or repressed, so that a fully-human person can seem like a miracle, so improbable a happening as to be awe-inspiring. And simultaneously one is heartened by the fact that self-actualizing persons do in fact exist, that they are therefore possible, that the gauntlet of dangers can be run, that the finish line can be crossed.